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Category Archives: adoption

happt mothers day to all. I know it hard to hear if your in the midst of infertility, someone complain about two kids, but its hard.

its hard BC its exhausting, obviously. But I feel an immense amount of guilt over Peanut. We are, with 99% confidence, going to adopt Peanut. And right now I’m all about fake it til you make it. We had always talked about adopting from foster care, and I’d told Joe that by the time that subject was even broached, we would have had months and months of bonding. But it seems that way, and has seemed that way from day 1. And we haven’t had that bonding. Then throw in that Peanut is a newborn baby blob(just like he’s supposed to be) it makes it more difficult. So right now, we love on him, tell him that we love him, kiss, him, cuddle him, hug him, sing to him songs saying “momma loves you, daddy loves you” BC I know we will someday. But right now we’re going through the motions. It’ll get easier as we have more time, and as he becomes more interactive.

but I feel guilty, that there wasn’t some instant love. I care deeply for him, and don’t want anything bad to happen, and would love for him to be ours forever, but right now, we’re still getting to know him, and adjust to our new familial norm.

No matter what happens with fertility treatments(or awesome unmedicated surprise pregnancy) or foster care, Joseph and I feel called to adopt. We are not certain if that adoption will be a private domestic infant, or an international adoption. Another thing we are certain of is the cost. We’re talking $30-$40k. So we will need to come up with some major fundraising. I have spoke to quite a few agency’s and adoption financial advisors, and it seems as though there are a crap ton of grants or “scholarships” if you will that just take time to apply. This will hopefully provide a great source of our financing. Joseph’s work has an adoption reimbursement as well, so that is a wonderufl option. There is also the adoption tax credit(which is nonrefundable, so I’m kinda hesitant to count this as a true way to help us get a kiddo to our family. but w/e.) But with all of this, we will need to do some major fundraising.

Fundraising to me is a difficult pride thing. I have seen snarky people online comment on how its expensive to bring any child into the world, and they don’t ask people to help pay for their kid. Blah blah blah. I clearly don’t hold with those beliefs. Boo snarks!

But after I set my pride aside, I can honestly say I’m excited. I’m excited to see what fun and creative ways to fundraise I can come up with. I have tons of ideas, and I think it’ll be great.

We had our final homestudy yesterday. It was long but went well. We are officially approved to do respite, and hopefully will be open sooner rather than later. Our worker said she has one study to write ahead of ours, but as soon as she write our draft we should be prepared for placements. After she has written our home study draft it has to be approved by her boss, the her boss’s boss. While that process can take awhile, if there is a situation where they need our home open BC of a specific placement, they can rush the process.

In our homestudy our worker asked us about our loss. I cried, and honestly, if she had asked me at the last one, I probably wouldn’t have cried. Its just so close to our due date, and AF is due any day now, so its an emotional time of the cycle. She asked if I felt we would can deal with more losses, BC that’s the one thing foster care promises, that we will lose placements and our hearts will break. i told her, it’ll hurt, and I’ll cry, probably everytime. But we know God is going to use us in these children’s lives exactly the way and length of time they need. And that’s what we are here for. She also said, if we can stick to our faith and fully trust in His plans, she is confident that we can get some adoptions out of this process. She said she doesn’t know how many placements we’ll have to take, but if we hang in there, it’ll happen.

also, those twins have been placed, so we are just waiting for some kiddos to be ours, for however long God intends.

I am currently ovulating…allegedly. It’s been 36 hours since we triggered. Also, I did a VLOG about my follicle scan, but realized I never did a written blog.

If you recall, we had decided to go all in this month. My RE upped my Femara to 10mg, hoping to pull up a third follicle. I was also put on metformin. I’ve been eating lower carb, drinking green tea, using cooking oils as lube. And we were going to try IUI if everything looked good.

My follie scan was Wednesday at 10am. My lining was 7.5mm(!) no cervical mucus was seen, BUT I wasn’t taking my expectorant as I should have been. I only have one mature follicle, on my left ovary, it was about a 19. My right ovary had a follicle about 13. I was super disappointed. The point of IUI is to have more eggs, and more sperm. But since we didn’t have more eggs, we decided to not do the IUI and waste the money. So we triggered Thursday morning in the 6 o’clock hour. So I’m probably ovulating, or really freaking close. If today is O day, we bd’d o-1 and o-3. We may go again tonight, we’ll have to wait and see.

In other news, Joseph and I were just discussing that we need to come up with a way to make more money. Because either way we look to expand our family(fertility treatments or adoption) cost a lot. And within three days, I have had two job opportunities.

I was contacted Wednesday I believe by a friend who currently does Foster care wanting to know if I would watch her two boys three days a week. I talked to Joseph and accepted, and am set to start Monday. Today driving home from my friend A’s house, I got a phone call from a sweet friend and there is a math opening at her school. She teaches at a good high school in the county I would like to get a job in. So I’m stuck. I went ahead an emailed the principal, and if he emails me saying he wants to set up an interview, I’ll tell my friend.

As I was driving home, listening to worship music, I saw a rainbow. I starting crying. Sobbing tears of joy. Because I know we are going through this devastating, terrible, nightmare of a storm trying to conceive. But I also now, the storm will end, and we will have our rainbow. Which doesn’t belittle the struggle and pain we have gone through, it just proves that despite all the pain, beautiful good things can happen and will happen for us.

I am confident Joseph and I will have several kids. Larger than the average American family. I am confident we will love all of our kids the same, no matter how they came into this world. I am eager to have a child in my arms to love and to hold. And I know we will have some kiddos this year.

Anyone who has even thought of (and therefore googled) adoption, domestic, or international, can atest to the sticker shock. Being completely truthful here, this is probably 3rd on the list of reasons why we are fostering first.

Anytime I get excited about adoption, the reality of the cost comes back to me. So today, one of the main things I was asking about at the adoption fair was how to afford adoption. There are many grants available, which take time, but are totally worth it. A few are straight up grants, others are matching grants which will match dollar for dollar up to some arbitrary limit. Some are based on income, some are essay contests, so are based on other criteria. Some of these have the criteria that you can not be funding any infertility treatment whilst pursuing adoption.

Then, they are quick to say loans. Many agencies actually offer 0% interest rate loans for the tax credit. Joseph and I are anti-loan. Just on principle. We believe that if we are bringing a child home, we want the home life(spiritual, relational, and financial) to be as stable as possible. Meaning we will not take on anymore debt in order to bring home our baby. We also will not bring home baby until we are debt free.

Then they rave about the tax credit. Joseph has researched that tax credit fairly thoroughly. The current tax credit is $13,190 for 2014. But, from our understanding, this tax credit is nonrefundable, and only counts towards a liability. So the only way we would be able to claim this full tax credit, is if we OWED $13,190 in taxes. So we would have to with an accountant to make this work for us.

Employer benefits, Joseph’s company has $5000 in adoption assistance, toward qualified expenses. This is a great blessing, which hopefully we will be able to take advantage of.

Domestic adoption is approximately $30,000, where as international varies from country to country, I’m thinking it’d be more like $40-45,000.

Other ways to raise funds include…fund raising/donations. Honestly, I have mixed feeling about this. And I’m not sure why. I would gladly(and have) donated for a couples adoption fund. But it feels weird to me to ask for money. It’s definitely a pride thing. I have spoken to some of my friends about this, and they said they don’t think it is weird. But it just feels uncomfortable. I do think I like the idea of making some. I am a very crafty person, and I feel confident I could make something(I have a great idea) and sell it as a donation to raise money for our future adoption.

This is all a ways away. We are going to fill our another application for our agency of choosing, and give updated information(ya know, since August) but I don’t anticipate us pursuing it until we are at least out of debt. But I am trying to think of ways and things we could do to raise funds. Maybe closer to the time, I’ll post some ideas and get some feedback.

I’m not holding my breath this cycle. We only bd’d one during my “fertile” window. And that’s ok with me. Joseph and I seriously considering not doing any more medicated cycles. We are burned out. So why pay all the money were paying if we’re too burned out to give it our all. So this may be our last cycle until 2015. We will continue to try, but no more medication, and ultrasounds, and suppositories, and shots in the belly. Just good ole’ boning when we want to. We haven’t officially decided, but I think we’re leaning heavily towards being done with meds. We’ll be able to focus on paying off our second mortgage, fostering, and saving for a new car. We have been cash flowing all of our treatments so far. It hasn’t been too difficult, but I’d be nice to get rid of that second mortgage, so we aren’t having to split our excess income. By getting rid of the second mortgage, we’ll be able to continue cash flowing treatments(even if I’m home with some children) if they treatments increase price. Ya know, adding in IUI or injectables can get pricey. We’d honestly probably need to take another year off to save for IVF, because we’d pay for that outright. But that kind lines up with my tentative schedules. Joseph and I have discussed that if by 30, we don’t have any birthed children, we’d look closer are IVF. So 2014 we’ll be 26. If still no conception on our own, we’ll medicate 2015 (we’ll be 27.) If still no baby, take a year off to save for IVF 2016 (we’ll be 28.) That’ll put us in 2017 able to afford IVF. Hopefully by then we’ll have some kiddos adopted from foster care already too a girl can hope!

1. Today I subbed for fourth grade at a small private school that my dear friends mom works at. She came up with her precious son who’s a little over a year old. She brought him up in his costume. And she peeks in the classroom and I can see the slightest baby bump. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know, but I know. I know that if I hadn’t lost my baby I’d have that exact same slight baby bump. Her baby is due 1 day after mine was. And she’ll have hers in 24 short weeks, and mine is a lifetime away.

I read and sobbed. She put into words what I haven’t been able to. It also touched me that my sweet friend, who has never had a loss(and I pray never experiences one.) recognizes this pain. My baby was real, I am a mother, I just have to be at peace knowing my baby is waiting for his mommy and daddy to meet him in heaven.

3. Adoption is hard! I would love to adopt a baby tomorrow. Financially we are not in a position to adopt, yet. But even if we were, we don’t meet most countries eligibility guidelines. Ya know, you have to be over 30, or married for 10 years, some countries is 35 year olds (That’s ten more years.) But what kills me is those countries where you have to be 30+ you can have up to three divorces per spouse…wait…what?! Over 30+ but unable to carry on a stable relationship. I don’t condone divorce, but one? Okay, still adopt. THREE? Clearly you have some relationship issues. And Joseph and I are sitting here, and I know many other couples are in the same place as us, in a happy, committed, monogamous relationship for the last 7 years, married for the last 3.5. We are going to do foster care, we just can’t start that until February, and I’ve got the baby bug.